Laboring Under the Illusion of Time
by xRainyDaysxx
Summary: A walker herd, a bullet, a death. Glenn Rhee is hoping he can still live with himself once this is all over.


**My AU take on this mess.**

 ***I do not own The Walking Dead. It belongs to its rightful owner.***

* * *

Glenn Rhee figured that when the world stopped so did time, the keeping track part anyway.

He stopped after he called up his mother and sisters but all he got was the dull, mocking tone of a dead line. After he showed up at their apartment because of the stories on the news that seemed believable enough, but all he saw was red.

Some guy named T-dog picked him up in a church van after that, saved Glenn from himself. They started on a journey neither knew the ending to and Glenn wasn't very religious, but he still listened to T-dog's preaching about God's plan for them all. Sometimes, he'd pray in the back of the van when his friend stepped out; though, he wouldn't talk about that. The two of them drove until they ran out of gas and the church van clambered off to the side of some Georgia road, making some awful noise.

A group took them in and Glenn acquired the role of gathering supplies, making runs into the city if he had to. He was reckless half the time but he just guessed it was the naïvety that came wrapped in a little box with youth. His hopes were high, whether he wanted them to be or not.

But then he met a Sheriff named Rick Grimes.

Rick Grimes was the first person he saved, first person he really stuck his neck out for. Rick Grimes was the first person since the bombs hit Atlanta and communication links went down to look him in the eyes and say "thank you" while actually really meaning it. Rick Grimes made him feel, in some way, appreciated – _important,_ no matter the extend of how much of a dumbass both of them had been before.

And because of that, Glenn decided he could always ask Dale the time because he wound his watch every morning.

He never did quite get around to it because before he could even think straight and the blurry images of his surroundings could come into focus, they were on the road and homeless again.

So Glenn Rhee accepted being stuck in some dimension from a video game, not knowing how long until the playthrough of the game was over and the credits rolled.

Until he met Maggie.

Until Hershel gave him _the watch._

He didn't understand it, then he did, and all of time was in his hands.

Glenn now crouches low to the worn tile of what once was a pet shop. It used to display puppies in the window but now it is holding their lives, _his people's lives,_ from the biggest herd he has ever seen. He reaches into his pocket for the watch because it is always there, as it is now, and swipes a thumb over the resting dirt on the glass surface displaying the little numbers.

 _The hands aren't moving._

He taps at the hands to get them to wake up and move because he needs to know the time, how much he may have left – but they remain motionless.

 _"They're coming."_ he hears from a whisper by the window. Glenn knows what's out there; he isn't quite sure if he is scared yet. With shaky fingers he presses the watch to his lips.

It is time to go.

* * *

When he told Heath he was supposed to be delivering pizzas he wasn't lying. It's what he was qualified for, what defined him in a past life. The title means nothing in present day, of course, and that is the ironic part, the part that allowed Glenn to smile and share a laugh. Most of the people left now barely made a name for themselves before.

He's doing this for Maggie.

That's what keeps him putting one foot in front of the other and nudging Nicholas along, even with a herd on their ass.

But as minutes Glenn cannot keep track of pass by, he realizes while Nicholas and himself become cornered what the mission has bled into. Nicholas frantically jumps up on the surrounding fencing and the chain-link speaks back as he springs away. Glenn doesn't move and his arms hang long and still while he tiredly tries to come up with a way to successfully put the six bullets remaining in his chamber into thousands of walkers.

In another time he had assumed going out the heroic way would be ideal, that it would mean something more than just kicking the bucket due to old age, or getting into a fatal car accident during another pizza delivery.

Now he thinks he'd rather have the latter.

The feeling buzzing through him is unlike others Glenn has experienced before. Like time has stopped completely because Hershel's watch no longer ticks, and everything is catching up to him. As if someone up above – who he prayed to those lonely nights in the back of a van dripping with faith – paused his may-have-been a video game world, but there's a glitch and he's still awake.

He snatches Nicholas and hauls him to the one lifeboat, a dumpster, to avoid the tide of walkers quickly pouring in. They climb to the surface and all too quickly the fence on the other side is blocked off by more of the undead. Walkers have a certain, distinct smell to them and Glenn's nostrils flare during an inhale. He breathes out alright, which is good since it indicates that he is alive – both of them, actually.

A walker grabs at Nicholas' shoelaces and he stumbles, but Glenn catches him, sitting the other man upright again. He knows it's questionable to why he spared Nicholas' life nights ago. Glenn had held him down, screaming the words _shut up,_ but the thoughts swirling around in his head would not obey to his request. Nicholas' life was in his hands and Glenn could still feel that bullet when it ripped through his shoulder, but he let him go. He let him go because he'd never done it before, the killing part, just witnessed someone else. He let him go because that's still who he was; those words he muttered to Rick at Terminus still mattered. Because maybe it would be someone else with him on the dumpster, or maybe it'd be just him. Because Glenn could have easily become Nicholas if he didn't change, didn't find time again.

Because, at the end of all this, he's still going to have to live with himself.

Walkers have consumed them, circling around the whole dumpster. To Glenn, the scenario feels like he's stuck in the middle of a tornado and the pieces that make his life whole are swirling around him. He can't feel a goddamn thing, but he wants to, he thinks.

But he's trying to put those pieces together, and he's trying to figure out a way to get home to his wife, Maggie, and keep Nicholas safe, and not be a dumbass, and to keep breathing because that is something he must do, not just for him.

He turns to Nicholas to say something; he forgets what now, because he finds that the other man is no longer there with him. Not mentally, at least. Nicholas is looking down and his face is all distorted. He's not moving, he's not speaking.

 _But he's breathing._

Glenn grabs Nicholas by the shoulders and fists the fabric of his T-shirt between his knuckles. He shakes him, screaming over the cries of the undead,

 _"Look at me! Hey! Hey! Nicholas! Look at me!"_

And then he's back. Looking at Glenn. Here, with him. Glenn lessens the pressure of his hands on Nicholas' loose-fitting shirt because his knuckles are turning white, but he doesn't let go. His mouth is slightly ajar, eyes staring Nicholas down, palms sweaty – _he's waiting._ For what? _Something._

Sometimes in those video games Glenn used to play when the world was normal and things made sense, the game would fall into some kind of slow motion right before the bad part.

Turns out, it actually goes a little like that.

In the real world not hidden behind glass of a screen, Nicholas looks Glenn straight in the eyes. He touches one of Glenn's hands that are perched on his shoulders for a moment, before saying,

 _"Thank you."_

Glenn does not understand and then the gun, _the gun,_ is out. The gun with one final bullet resting in the chamber – because Glenn heard him count out loud after every shot when they still thought they could make an indent in the herd – is ready to go.

Nicolas shoves the gun against the side of his head and Glenn's world stops.

He wants to scream. He wants to knock the gun from Nicholas and into the sea of walkers if that's what it comes to. He wants to just run somewhere and not have to be here for the BOOM. But he can't do anything. Nothing. His forearms wobble and shake, but nothing.

Nothing but harsh ringing clouding his eardrums and a spray of red when a part of Nicholas becomes a part of Glenn.

The balance is broken between the two of them and Glenn feels himself teetering and floating away with Nicholas because he hasn't let go. They both tumble off the side of the dumpster.

Glenn's back slaps against the harsh, cold concrete. His lungs push up and then they stop; there is no airflow. He looks up to see the horde around his defeated form, the sun highlighting their decaying features as they lean in for the kill.

 _He wants to scream again._

But he can't breathe.

Then he can, and the life rushes back into his body. A crushing weight is on his chest and he glances down, Nicholas is sprawled out over him. The other man is unmoving, of course, and beginning to grow cold; Glenn has to remind himself the reason why.

Nicholas' body begins moving erratically and with one of those tugs, his body opens like a piñata. The walkers around file in and start doing what makes the situation horrific, despite the amount of times Glenn has seen it, experienced it, lived through it –

 _"Don't let go!"_

 _Noah._

He had the boy.

Until the warmth of his touched was ripped away and Glenn watched the light leave his eyes, pressed up against the glass of a door.

Usually when the undead surrounds and chows down, their victim is screaming, so it gives Glenn an option to look away and tune out. But Nicholas is just, well, _gone_ and his voice is broken – _there's nothing._ Without sound, Glenn is forced to watch the scene unfold before his eyes while he gets painted in red.

And as awful as it sounds in his own head, Glenn almost wishes Nicholas didn't opt out before they fell so at least he would have something to hold onto.

 _Glenn screams._

He screams and his vision blurs as he does. He feels more of Nicholas squirt on his face, on his skin, and makes another terrifying sound. Glenn wiggles and slides and rolls, smacking limbs and bodies and objects, yet nothing notices because of how much he is decorated in red. He hits his head going under the little gap in the dumpster, but he doesn't quite feel it, is just aware. Glenn is only a few feet off now, so when something jabs him the shoulder he is presented with Nicholas' still attached arm, hand curled into a fist. Glenn's eyes follow upwards and he realizes that Nicholas' eyes never closed. They stare at him, sadly, cold, blank, dark –

Glenn looks away when multiple walkers rip into the arm with blackened teeth and snarls. He tries not to think too hard.

 _It's just an empty shell of a man who once was._

In an explosion of static, the walkie-talkie clipped to Glenn's belt jolts to life:

 _"Glenn . . . Glenn!"_

It's Rick. The first person to tell him thank you, Nicholas, the last.

Rick's voice is shortly followed by gunshots, the line goes dead.

And out of all the things Glenn could say or do, the only thing that makes sense is to cry.

* * *

 _"Why'd you stick your neck out for me?" the Sheriff asks, making Glenn pause._

 _"Call it foolish, naïve hope," he replies, "that if I'm ever that far up shit creek, somebody might do the same for me."_

 _He smiles._

 _"Guess I'm an even bigger dumbass than you."_


End file.
